Salaries Are Looking Up

By Martha Walz — July 06, 2011

If you want to know if the economy is recovering, the results of our salary survey give a promising outlook. While there were no huge jumps in salary for any category of worker over the past year, there were modest gains in most categories, and the majority of respondents reported receiving raises in the past 12 months.

These are the results of the fourth annual Mobile Enterprise salary survey which was fielded to Mobile Enterprise readers in May and June 2011. Respondents were asked to report their annual salaries for the calendar years 2009 and 2010.

The average respondent to this year’s survey is a 50-year-old male in an IT management role who earned $101,547 in 2010, only 0.38% more than the $97,782 he earned in 2009. He’s been in his industry for about 18 years and has held his current position for about nine years.

He spends fewer than 10 hours per week as a mobile employee (meaning that he is not performing his job at a specific desk in his company’s office). He’s one of about 17,000 employees at an enterprise that brought in between $75-$100 million in revenue in 2010.

For the purposes of this report, we broadly define the mobile executive as anyone who is actively involved in making purchasing decisions, managing, deploying, or using mobile devices, software, and/or wireless networks in their enterprises.

The figures comparing average salary in 2010 and 2009 (figures 2 and 4) are derived from responses to our 2011 survey; they are not a comparison between our 2011 and 2010 survey results. This is due to the fact that the profile of our 2011 respondents differs in many ways from those who took our 2010 survey, most notably in company size and revenue.

The 134 respondents to our 2011 salary survey are employed at enterprises of varying sizes across a wide range of vertical markets. The verticals with the greatest number of respondents include:

About one-third of respondents (32.2%) make financial decisions related to the purchasing and deployment of mobile/wireless technologies in their enterprises; of these, 19.3% also have operational responsibility for those solutions (Fig. 1). One-fifth of respondents (20.2%) are responsible for the management or administration of the mobile/wireless deployments and/or networks.

The largest year-over-year salary increase in 2010 went to the financial decision makers with no operational responsibility (Fig. 2). In 2010 they earned $167,499, an increase of 0.76% over their 2009 salary of $155,625.

Those who deploy and maintain mobile solutions earned the next largest bump in salary, increasing 0.63% to $70,062 in 2010 from $74,411 in 2009. All other categories had much smaller gains or were flat in 2010 from the prior 12 months.

Job Function

Respondents in 2011 span a range of job functions (Fig. 3), including IT management (28.0%), non-IT management (17.8%), engineers (13.6%), sales and marketing (11.0%), and analysts (9.3%). Other respondents’ job functions include C-level non-IT executives, CIOs/CTOs, and those in operations/administration/finance.

Average salaries declined for respondents in engineering (Fig. 4). Consultants’ salaries remained flat. Average salaries for those in the CTO/CIO and IT management categories increased about a quarter of a percent, 0.28% and 0.23%, respectively. Those in operations/administration/finance saw the biggest bump in salary with a 1.22% increase over 2009. Non-IT management, analysts, and C-level executives all saw smaller increases in 2010 over 2009.

Salary Ups and Downs

While the average salaries and percentage increases in this report are aggregated from actual dollar amounts reported by respondents to the survey, we also asked them to report whether they had received a salary increase in the prior 12 months (Fig. 8). Overall, more than half of respondents (56.3%) reported that they received a raise while 43.7% reported not receiving a raise. For those who earned a salary bump, the average percentage increase was 4.8% over the prior 12 months.

We also asked respondents whether their salaries decreased in the past 12 months (Fig. 8). The majority of respondents (86.3%) reported that their salaries were not cut; of the 13.7% of respondents whose salaries were cut, the average decrease was 5.5%, with fully one-third of respondents receiving a decrease of 3%.

Going Beyond Salary

Unlike our year-on-year salary calculations, our year-on-year comparison of benefits beyond salary (Fig. 5) and average number of hours worked per week (Fig. 6) are derived from responses to our 2011 and 2010 surveys.

In terms of benefits, the response was bleak. The percentage of respondents receiving most types of benefits declined in 2010 over 2009 levels. The only slight increases in benefit levels were seen in personal days (beyond vacation/holidays), retirement plans, and meal allowances. All other categories of benefits saw marked decreases over 2009 levels, with the largest percentage decrease seen in IT/certification training.

Make Mine Mobile

The number of hours worked per week remained relatively steady from 2009 levels (Fig. 6), but no respondents reported working fewer than 20 hours per week, and there was an increase in respondents reporting working more than 60 hours per week. Almost half of respondents (47.1%) reported working 40 to 50 hours per week, while about a quarter of respondents (24.1%) work 50 to 60 hours per week.

When it comes to mobility, the overwhelming majority of respondents, 51%, report being deskbound or spending fewer than 10 hours per week as a mobile worker (Fig. 7). Only 17% of respondents report spending 30 or more hours per week as a mobile worker.

In looking at trends around benefits and number of hours worked, it’s important to note that some of these shifts may be attributable to variances in the size of the enterprises and the vertical markets represented by individual respondents year-on-year.

Respondent Profiles

The majority of respondents (52.2%) have been in their respective industries for 20 years or more. Of these, 28.4% have been in their industries for 26 years or more. Just over a quarter of respondents (28.3%) have been in their industries for 11-19 years; almost one-fifth of respondents (19.3%) have been in their industries for 10 years or fewer.

When it comes to their current positions, 4.6% of respondents have held them for less than a year. The majority of respondents (59.7%) have held their current posts for 1 to 10 years, while nearly a quarter (22.9%) have been in their current positions for 11 to 19 years. Of the 12.8% of respondents who reported holding their current positions for 20 years or more, 8.3% of those report being in their current positions for 26 years or more.

Respondents came from all regions of the U.S., with 29.0% based in the Midwest, 17.2% in the Northeast, 16.1% in the Southwest, 14.0% in the Southeast, and roughly equal numbers from the Mid-Atlantic, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest. The majority of respondents (79.6%) are male. 17.4% of respondents have a high school diploma or some college, 18.4% have an associate or technical degree, 33.0% have a bachelor’s degree, and 31.1% have post-graduate degrees.

Overall, compensation in enterprise mobility is looking up. Respondents are on solid ground in their positions and salaries, and with the economy continuing to recover, the outlook continues to look bright.

About the Mobile Enterprise 2011 Salary Survey
This survey was conducted over a six-week period in May and June 2011 by Mobile Enterprise. The survey responses were obtained by sending an e-mail invitation to Mobile Enterprise subscribers that asked respondents to participate in the survey using a Web-based form. A drawing to win one of four $50 American Express gift checks was offered as an incentive to complete the survey. Reminder invitations were sent to those that did not respond to the initial survey. A total of 134 respondents entered the survey. Some respondents did not complete all aspects of every question. Mobile Enterprise performed a random drawing to select the winners of the incentive.

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